We know little about the people we hear the most about, especially politicians. The media tells us that Hillary Clinton hopes voters will call her a woman of the people and Stephen Harper likes hockey. But most of us have no idea how political leaders reveal themselves in private.

What about the more interesting questions. Are they sycophantic, generous, paranoid? Are they bullies? Are they quick to anger? Are they naive? Only the patient among us will ever know, and only if we wait till the truth trickles out through the accounts of their associates deposited in libraries.

History is the return of the repressed, to adapt a phrase Freud used. Archives are the guilty memory of the powerful. Everyone who gets close to powerful individuals can write letters or keep a diary. Many do.

Eventually, to learn what words were spoken, we have to consult books like Six Months in 1945: FDR, Stalin, Churchill and Truman — from World War to Cold War (Random House). The author, Michael Dobbs, doesn’t neglect the issues but pays special attention to words uttered in unguarded moments.

“Stalin?” said Franklin Roosevelt. “I can handle that old buzzard.”

Few ever called FDR naive, but he saw nothing devious in Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union by lying, cheating and murdering. Roosevelt believed Stalin “could not be so very different from other people.” This quote comes from FDR’s closest assistant, Harry Hopkins. When Roosevelt went to the Yalta conference in Crimea to argue with Stalin and Churchill, he was visibly ill, just two months away from death. Still, he believed his powers of persuasion would carry him through.

Winston Churchill was as naive as Roosevelt. After his first meeting with Stalin he said, “I like him the more I see him.” He felt that if he could only dine with Stalin once a week, there would be no trouble.

Churchill’s opinion of Roosevelt had a romantic quality. He told his aides: “I love that man.” After the war he said that, “no lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.” He suspected FDR of being too attentive to Stalin. He felt jilted, Dobbs says, when Americans and Russians dealt with each other directly, leaving him out.

When Roosevelt went to Yalta, he wanted to bring Russia into the war against Japan. He hoped to persuade Stalin to help organize the United Nations and to allow independence to Poland and the other countries the Red Army had occupied while fighting the Germans.

Amazingly, Stalin agreed (after friendly arguments) to everything. Back home, Yalta was treated as a great success for American policy: “a landmark in human history,” said William Shirer, the famous broadcaster.

By the time Roosevelt died, on April 12, he knew that Stalin was not the friendly partner he had imagined. For the moment, however, Yalta looked to the world like a success.

The Truman era was different. For reasons unknown, Roosevelt had never prepared Vice President Harry Truman for the problems he inherited when he was sworn in as president. He did not know the atom bomb existed and he knew little about Yalta. No one had shown him the correspondence between Roosevelt and Stalin. He wasn’t cleared to enter the secret Map Room.

In his first few days on the job, he learned that Stalin was not allowing free elections in Poland. Instead, he was building an empire. Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Union’s deputy premier, came to Washington 10 days after Truman became president. Truman thought the Yalta agreements were turning into “a one-way street.” He decided that if the Russians wouldn’t co-operate, they could go to hell.

When Molotov arrived, Truman told him the Yalta agreements were still part of American policy. He also said it only remained for Marshal Stalin to carry them out “in accordance with his word.” Then Truman stood up. “That will be all, Mr. Molotov,” he said. “I would appreciate it if you would transmit my views to Marshal Stalin.”

Are they sycophantic, generous, paranoid? Are they bullies? Are they quick to anger? Are they naive? Only the patient among us will ever know, and only if we wait till the truth trickles out through the accounts of their associates deposited in libraries.

Molotov later complained about Truman’s imperious tone: “I have never been talked to like that in my life.” Truman boasted to his staff, “I gave it to him straight. It was a straight one-two to the jaw.”

That was the first day of the Cold War, which would last 44 years. At the time no one knew about the crucial conversation. We had to wait for the archives to yield the truth.

National Post
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-the-secret-conversation-that-started-the-cold-war/feed1stdPersonnel use a Cold War-era tunnel leading to a bunker now housing the Norwegian military headquarters, at an air base in Bodo, Norway.AFP/Getty ImagesKelly McParland: Thought police return to Putin's Sovietizedhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-putins-latest-laws-signal-a-return-to-rule-by-fear
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kelly-mcparland-putins-latest-laws-signal-a-return-to-rule-by-fear#commentsTue, 06 May 2014 17:28:26 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=152803

The nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia — the one masked militants in eastern Ukraine so desperately want to join — is becoming clear, and increasingly ugly.

The new Russia looks ever-more like the old Soviet Union. Since introducing laws last year aiming to “cleanse” Russia of homosexuality — which he equated to pedophilia — the Russian president has followed up with a series of bans restricting television, films, the internet, blogs, theatre, books and public performances. Russians have to be increasingly careful about what they think or say, and who they share it with. The paranoia that characterized the Soviet Union — the destruction of which Mr. Putin called one of the great disasters of the 2oth century — is being reborn.

In his latest directive, Mr. Putin signed a law forbidding all use of foul language in films, television, broadcasts, theatres and the media. The law “bans the use of obscene language while ensuring the rights of Russian citizens to the use of the state language, and protecting and developing language culture.” Films containing banned words may be refused distribution, while actors using prohibited language face performance bans of up to three months, according to CNN. Violations will be punished with fines of up to $1,500 for organisations or $80 for for individuals.

A BBC report says a panel of “experts” will be created to decide what words count as swear words. Any books with foul language will have to carry a warning on their cover, and video distributors will have to warn purchasers or have their licence withdrawn. Clearly Miley Cyrus will not be selling many videos in Putin’s Russia.

One report said the new rules will apply to any blog that receives more than 3,000 hits a day, the latest effort to widen state control of online activities. In April Mr. Putin told a group of journalists the Internet was a “CIA project,” used by the U.S. government to monitor web traffic around the world. Starting in August, social media web sites will have to have their servers located in Russia, and preserve all user data for a minimum of six months. Bloggers will have to register with the government, and will be banned from revealing information about an individual’s address, or family lives. According to National Public Radio: “Critics say that provision could be used against anti-corruption bloggers who have revealed embarrassing details about undeclared bank accounts and luxurious homes owned by public officials.”

Another new law will enable Moscow to block sites without a court order. Russia’s biggest social media site is now under the control of people close to Mr. Putin, according to a report in Al Jazeera.

Another law signed on Monday makes it illegal to “wittingly spreading false information about the activity of the USSR during the years of World War Two”. Russians could face up to five years in jail for questioning the official version of Nazi crimes and Moscow’s role in the war, possibly including any criticism of Joseph Stalin, Moscow’s wartime leader, who has been blamed for ordering the deaths of tens of millions of Russians during mass purges against enemies and opponents of Communism. It could also be illegal to repeat comparisons likening Russia’s current activities in Ukraine to Hitler’s seizure of European territory before the Second World War.

Weird Al Yankovic's hugely successful week of music video releases hit a snag on Sunday after the parody artist came under fire for his reference to 'spastics' in his single Word CrimesWeird Al Yankovic's hugely successful week of music video releases hit a snag on Sunday after the parody artist came under fire for his reference to "spastics" in his single <em>Word Crimes</em>.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc&w=620]
After several bloggers pointed out that the term has been used as a derogatory reference to those with cerebral palsy, Yankovic took to Twitter to apologize for the gaffe, claiming he was unaware of the connotations.
"If you thought I didn’t know that 'spastic' is considered a highly offensive slur by some people … you’re right, I didn’t," he wrote. "Deeply sorry."
https://twitter.com/alyankovic/status/490724534513700864
There's no word as to whether the singer plans to change the song's lyrics.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Yankovic released yet another single from his upcoming album Mandatory Fun: <em>Lame Claim to Fame</em>, which pokes fun at those who brag about having encountered — though not necessarily met — celebrities. You can watch that video below.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yazr8JkazmE&w=620]
[related_links /]

The crackdown further increases the return to the sort of repressive, state-dominated regime Mr. Putin served during his days as a KGB agent before entering politics. Mr. Putin readily jails critics, rivals and political opponents. Russia is once again considered one of the world’s most corrupt countries. Moscow responds to external challenges by threatening war, and used the revolt against a corrupt, Russian-backed government in Ukraine to illegally seize Crimea and support violent pro-Russian militias in the eastern sector of the country.

Moscow insists it is responding to demands from Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population, though the rise in violence seems driven more by heavily armed masked men with military links than by an outpouring of public support. It would be interesting to know just how desperately Russian-speakers in Ukraine really want to submit themselves to Mr. Putin and his oppressive regime. We’re unlikely to find out, of course, given a Russian government that seems determined to rule by fear.

In a few days we will come to a doleful anniversary. Sixty-nine years will have passed since Yalta, the wartime summit of the “Big Three,” generally blamed for consigning Eastern Europe to the tender mercies of Stalin and his successors for the next 45 years. Some eminent students of history, including my friend Conrad Black, say this is nonsense. It probably is, but this won’t change the minds of two generations who saw their lives going down the drain after U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Leader Joseph V. Stalin, signed on the dotted line in February, 1945.

It’s true enough that if Stalin had actually done what he committed himself to doing at Yalta, the “captive nations” of Eastern Europe wouldn’t have become captive nations. But it’s also true that expecting Stalin to do what he committed himself to doing if he could do better for himself by doing something else was foolish. Since Roosevelt and Churchill were no fools, they had to be hypocrites. They had to know that no provisions of Yalta that would thwart Stalin’s ambitions for the region would be honoured unless enforced, and the Western allies had no enforcement mechanism in place.

The Soviet armies fought their way to Berlin, carrying the hammer and sickle to the Reichstag, or what was left of it. It was plain that they were not going leave the countries they crossed to reach the German capital until they had secured them for the Soviet empire’s orbit. This sealed the fate of the Baltic countries and territories annexed from Finland, Poland and Romania, while Czechoslovakia (as it then was,) Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany, along with Poland and Romania proper, became satellites in the communist constellation. It was viewed as a minor miracle when the warriors of scientific socialism actually agreed to leave Austria, vacating the Soviet sector of Vienna in 1954. It remained the only example of Soviet forces leaving a country without being pushed militarily, until the Kremlin’s empire began imploding in 1989.

The Rolling Stones on Tuesday cancelled the first date on their Australian tour after the death of fashion designer L'Wren Scott, Mick Jagger's girlfriend<span style="line-height:1.5em;">The Rolling Stones on Tuesday cancelled the first date on their Australian tour after the death of fashion designer L'Wren Scott, Mick Jagger's girlfriend.</span>
The designer, whose company was heavily in debt, was found dead in her New York apartment Monday in an apparent suicide.
Concert organizer Frontier Touring said Tuesday that a Stones show scheduled for Wednesday in Perth, Western Australia, would not go ahead. There was no immediate word on future dates on the tour, including a Saturday concert in Adelaide.
The Stones are scheduled to tour Australian and New Zealand, then play a string of European dates starting in June.
[ooyala code="hpN2c4bDpOrYejk-qtnLU72TxpyhaUAQ" player_id="29345e61bd154274ae9287c2b0ea4fe2"]
Scott was found dead in her Manhattan apartment at 10 a.m. Monday by an assistant; police said no note was found and there was no sign of foul play. Scott was found kneeling with a scarf wrapped around her neck that had been tied to the handle of a French door, police said.
[np_storybar title="L’Wren Scott, fashion designer and Mick Jagger’s longtime girlfriend, found dead of apparent suicide" link="http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/03/17/lwren-scott-mick-jaggers-longtime-girlfriend-found-dead-of-apparent-suicide-reports/"%5D
L’Wren Scott, a celebrity stylist who is Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, has been found dead in Manhattan of a possible suicide, a law enforcement official has told The Associated Press.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the victim’s next of kin had not yet been notified.
The official says Scott was found hanging from a doorknob by her assistant at 10 a.m. Monday. The official says no note was found and there was no sign of foul play.
<a href="http://arts.nationalpost.com/2014/03/17/lwren-scott-mick-jaggers-longtime-girlfriend-found-dead-of-apparent-suicide-reports/&quot; target="_blank">Read more...</a>
[/np_storybar]
Jagger's representative said the singer was "completely shocked and devastated by the news" of Scott's death.
Last month Scott, who was believed to be 49 but had not disclosed her precise age, cancelled her London Fashion Week show, due to reported production delays.
Accounts filed by Scott's LS Fashion Ltd. in London show the company had liabilities that exceeded assets by 4.24 million euros ($6.5-million) as of Dec. 31, 2012.
The company's long and short-term debts totalled $10.4-million against assets, capital and reserves of $3.85-million, according to the accounts, which were filed in October.
Scott was adopted by a Mormon couple and grew up in the small town of Roy, Utah. As a teenager, she developed a love of clothes and made her own, according to biographical notes from London Fashion Week. She made her way to Paris after high school where, aided by her 6-foot-3 (1.9 metre) height and striking looks, she found work as a model for some prominent photographers.
[caption id="attachment_142995" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-142995" alt="Jemal Countess/Getty Images" src="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/scott2.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="464" /> Jemal Countess/Getty Images[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_142996" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-142996" alt="Brad Barket/Getty Images" src="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/scott3.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="464" /> Brad Barket/Getty Images[/caption]
But she became more interested in working with clothes than modeling them, and eventually made her name as a top stylist in Los Angeles and a costume designer for films including <em>Ocean's 13</em>.
Scott, whose elegant designs in lush fabrics were worn by celebrities including Madonna, Nicole Kidman, Oprah Winfrey, Penelope Cruz and U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, had been a fixture on Jagger's arm since she met the Rolling Stones frontman in 2001. On red carpets, the designer towered over her famous boyfriend.
In 2006, Scott founded her eponymous label, with an initial collection based on the "Little Black Dress." She became known for designs that had a vintage feel and bared little skin, such as her famous "headmistress" dress -- prim, with three-quarter sleeves, but also close-fitting and stylish.
[caption id="attachment_142998" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-142998" alt="Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images" src="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/scott6.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="464" /> Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_142999" align="alignright" width="620"]<img class="size-large wp-image-142999" alt="Anna Webber/Getty Images for Glamour" src="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/scott7.jpg?w=620&quot; width="620" height="464" /> Anna Webber/Getty Images for Glamour[/caption]
Madonna was one of those who wore Scott's designs and called her death "a horrible and tragic loss."
"I'm so upset. I loved L'Wren's work and she was always so generous with me," the singer said in a statement released by her publicist.
Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour called Scott "a total perfectionist, someone who absolutely embodied everything her marvelous clothes stood for: strength of character combined with a confident and powerful style."
And supermodel Naomi Campbell, a close friend, wrote on WhoSay that Scott was "the epitome of elegance and femininity yet still had a girlish quality. I will miss her honesty and I will miss her friendship. My heart goes out to Mick and all who loved her and were loved by her."

The grim decades of communist rule that followed Yalta were aggravated for East Europeans by a sense of rejection. The West always loomed large in the imagination of Poles, Czechs, Hungarians. They were impressed by Western achievements, scholarship, literature, manners and mores, and tried to emulate or even mimic them. They realized the West didn’t reciprocate their ardour, but assumed a degree of polite interest, collegiality, perhaps an acknowledgement of fellowship in a shared civilization. They thought they had a common cause with the West and were at least junior partners in the enterprise. Yalta, and the events that followed, brought home to them that they were mistaken.

Profoundly mistaken, in fact. No region in the world arouses less interest in Westerners on either side of the Atlantic than Eastern Europe. Its culture, climate, cuisine; the very look of its people, spells tedium. Not distant enough for exotic appeal, not close enough for kinship, but too close for comfort, Eastern Europe is an unspectacular landscape, populated by drab, fussy people, addicted to sausages. Yalta is too good for them.

East Europeans didn’t want to go to war and didn’t want others to go to war for them; they just wanted someone to raise their voice. It seemed no one did, or no one did loud enough. They understood that sending people into battle, especially against a recent ally, would be a hard sell. What amazed some Poles and Hungarians was how effortlessly the West made this sell when communism threatened to overrun Korea in 1950. Were the hills of distant Korea more important strategically than the doorstep of Europe? Maybe, but you wouldn’t have convinced too many Poles of that.

The West tried hard enough to stop the spread of Soviet expansion through proxies. It risked a nuclear confrontation in Cuba — isn’t that loud enough?

Maybe, say some critics of Yalta, if the voices had been louder earlier, there would have been no need for a confrontation so near America’s shores. A loud voice and big stick are an irresistible combination. Too bad Stephen Harper didn’t have a forum back in those days. Too bad he doesn’t have a big stick.

A researcher says she has uncovered vital testimony from a U.S. officer who in 1943 was forced by the Nazis to watch as they exhumed thousands of Polish officers killed on Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s orders.

At a news conference Wednesday in Warsaw, U.S. researcher Krystyna Piorkowska said she found the Paris-dated May 10, 1945, testimony of former American prisoner of war Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr. in the U.S. National Archives near Washington last November. It was filed among other unrelated World War II documents from the U.S. Embassy in Paris.

AFP/Getty ImagesA picture taken on April 1, 1943 shows men digging out bodies of Polish officers from a mass grave in Katyn. More than 22,000 Polish officers were killed by Soviet security forces in the Katyn forest and other sites in 1940.

The sworn deposition provides evidence of Soviet responsibility for the 1940 massacre of some 22,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest and other places in what was then the Soviet Union. The Soviet Red Army had taken the Polish officers prisoner after invading eastern Poland in September 1939.

Another report that Van Vliet made a few days later in Washington is considered missing. This has fuelled speculation that the U.S. government helped cover up Soviet responsibility for the massacre out of fear that saying the truth would anger Stalin, whom the Allies were counting on to help them defeat Germany and Japan in World War II.

For decades, Moscow had blamed the Nazis for the massacre, but then in 1990 admitted that Stalin had ordered it. The massacre further embittered Poland’s relations with Moscow, which has refused to consider the massacre a genocide and has been reluctant to prosecute any living henchmen.

Van Vliet was a POW in Germany when he was taken to Katyn to see the evidence.

In the document that Piorkowska found, Van Vliet tells an interrogating U.S. officer that he saw the exhumation of some 3,500 corpses in tailor-made, little-worn Polish uniforms. They were all killed with a shot to the back of the head.

He said the “decomposition of the corpses and the nature of the undergrowth undisturbed” on the graves indicated they must have remained there “over a year – possibly three or four.”

“The belongings removed from the corpses all indicated death in the months of February, March or April, 1940,” Van Vliet said.

The area was under Soviet control then. Germany’s Nazi regime discovered the graves in early 1943 after invading parts of the Soviet Union.

AP PhotoIn this Nov. 28, 1943 file photo, Soviet Union Premier Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, center, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sit together during the Tehran Conference in Tehran, Iran. The three leaders, meeting for the first time, discussed Allied plans for the war against Germany and for postwar cooperation in the United Nations.

The report by Van Vliet named other Allied POWs who witnessed the exhumation with him. Some of the names were not known previously to Polish historians.

Piorkowska told The Associated Press that the deposition was a signal to “go on searching, that there are still more documents to be found.”

“This offers new names and suggestions of where to seek new evidence,” she said, adding that she was seeking to get in touch with the other POWs’ families.

Van Vliet made a new report in 1950 to help a U.S. investigation of the Katyn massacre. That document is available but is considered less valuable because of its distance in time from the actual event.

It is a painful, but necessary, duty to address the dismaying subject of Diana West’s book, “American Betrayal,” about which she has written, in the last few days, “The war of words is over.” Her authority for this triumphalist expression of relief is that Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and his co-commentator, Pavel Stroilov, have described Mrs. West’s book as “huge and brilliant.” Part of their review of her book, and much of the debate, has been a fierce firefight including a considerable, though often somewhat entertaining, volume of recriminations that asperse the rigour, motivations, ideological orientation, integrity, and sanity of the two sides.

I do not fit any of the stereotypes erected and riddled with high-explosive projectiles by both camps, and am merely a non-American biographer of Roosevelt and strategic historian, of impeccable conservative credentials. I have enjoyed the previous work of Mrs. West that I have seen. Accordingly, I will try to illuminate the battlefield without injuring anyone unnecessarily, since I am usually in some sympathy with all the combatants. Vladimir Bukovsky, after 12 years in Soviet labor camps and psychiatric hospitals, commands respect as a man, but his article with Mr. Stroilov is, to say the least, un-rigorous, and certainly does not end the war of words. It merely escalates it.

Let us consider what he wrote, in defence of Mrs. West’s assertions that the United States was betrayed by its governments, opposite Soviet Communism, from the 1930s through the 1980s, and then let us return, very succinctly, to the indisputable facts.

Related

I agree with the spirit and object of Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov’s question of how could “this great civilization of ours have [been] degraded into such a hypocritical nonsense as political correctness.” In this, all the warriors who have raised their faces above the parapets are on the same side. Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov begin with another good thrashing of the useful idiots of the Western intelligentsia and media who whitewashed Stalin’s pre-war crimes.

Where it all starts to go horribly wrong is in the sudden metamorphosis of Walter Duranty, New York Times Pulitzer Prize Stalin apologist, into Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, Mr. Bukovsky has learned, presumably from whatever unimaginable emanations possessed him in his decades of brave resistance to Communism and in his apparently incomplete convalescence since, sought a “convergence” of Stalinist socialism with American constitutional government. This was a process that “had already begun, as the Roosevelt administration was full of Soviet agents of influence, including Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and crucially, Harry Hopkins — FDR’s alter ego, his ‘personal foreign secretary,’ and the most powerful man in the White House” (presumably not excluding the president himself). These, we read, are “proven facts” of “the glorious FDR administration.”

REUTERS/Tobias SchwarzFile picture shows German Internet millionaire Kim Schmitz during his trial at a district court in Munich May 27, 2002.

Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov write that the Western democracies entered the Second World War to “defend the freedom of Poland,” and “ended it by surrendering Poland and a dozen other nations to a totalitarian empire worse than Hitler’s. Was this really a victory?” Yes, it was. If Soviet dissidents were expecting the Anglo-Americans to sweep away the Soviet Union while they were defeating Nazism in the West and the Japanese imperialists in the Pacific, they were bound to be disappointed.

When Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, the banking and stock- and commodities-exchange systems had collapsed and were closed sine die; unemployment was 33%, and there was no direct federal relief for the victims of it. Roosevelt was a capitalist, and he saved capitalism. He made mistakes, as he said he would, but he salvaged 95% of the system, maintained the moral integrity of the country, and focused the rage and frustration of the era on the country’s true enemies — foreign imperialists. The charge of aspiring to a blended system with Stalinist Communism, with its liquidations and gulags, is unfounded and disgusting. FDR considered it an equivalent evil to Nazism and publicly said so during the Russo-Finnish war, and privately many times, including in his correspondence with Pius XII.

If generations of American leaders were secretly throwing the game against the U.S.S.R., how did the West win?

Hopkins, the purported real power in the White House, was a relief, workfare, and lend-lease administrator; he had no influence on Roosevelt’s foreign policy, though he was sent on a couple of foreign missions. He moved out of the White House when he remarried, before Roosevelt had any dealings with Stalin (surely leaving the president as the undisputedly most influential person in the building). Alger Hiss had no influence, ceased his incompetent efforts at espionage in the mid-Thirties, and did not exchange a word with Roosevelt at Yalta; his only contribution was to recommend, unsuccessfully, that the U.S.S.R. not have three votes in the United Nations general assembly. The purported quotes from FDR and General Marshall are so far out of context, as cited, that they are false.

According to Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov, Mrs. West’s book “persuasively demonstrates” that Roosevelt abandoned “the Italian front to concentrate forces for the invasion of Normandy … because Stalin demanded [it],” as “the pro-Soviet FDR administration rejected such sensible alternatives as advancing from Italy to [the] Balkans and eastern Europe, which might have limited the Red Army’s advance to the West.” A very little knowledge is a very dangerous thing. Churchill and his advisors, veterans of the hecatomb on the Western Front of the First World War, feared direct confrontation with Germany and had the military habits of a great maritime power; they were convinced that Stalin supported the French alternative because he believed, as they (Churchill and Brooke, the chief of the general staff) did, that the Germans would throw the Western Allies into the sea, as they had at Dunkirk, Greece, Crete, and Dieppe.

Roosevelt knew what they thought, but believed that the Allies would succeed, that the war would be won by whoever took most of Germany, and that the only route to the conquest of Germany from the West was through France. Italy was a defending army’s paradise: It took almost two years to clear, compared with six months for France. And the whole notion of landing armies near Trieste and advancing on a narrow front through the “Ljubljana Gap,” which Eisenhower said did not really exist, toward Vienna, was mad. The Germans would have bottled it up more easily than they did the Italian front, and the Soviets would have taken all Germany and, with their local Communist parties, France and northern Italy.

Even Churchill and Brooke acknowledged, after the success of the landings in Normandy and Dragoon (in southern France), that Roosevelt and Marshall were correct. This is why Roosevelt stayed in the Soviet embassy at Tehran, although he knew his rooms were bugged, to ensure that Stalin decided the Normandy-Adriatic argument in his favour (and to Stalin’s own despite, as Roosevelt foresaw). It was a mighty act of diplomatic and strategic genius, on a par with Franklin’s mission to France in 1778 — not, as is claimed by Mrs. West and Mr. Bukovsky, an act of treason by Roosevelt.

Apparently, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Kissinger were all a part of the same conspiracy to deliver the world to the masters in the Kremlin

There are a great many other fantastic claims in the Bukovsky-Stroilov article, such as that Soviet agents in Washington thwarted anti-Nazi plots in Germany; that “the U.S. simply went along with the Sovietization of Eastern Europe in breach of the Yalta Agreement” (my italics; it is elsewhere in the article represented as a sellout to Stalin); that the Cold War “was never much of a war on the Western side,” which raises the question of how we won it; and that “‘détente’ was … developed … secretly, treacherously, through KGB channels, as a means to achieve that ‘convergence’” (yes, the same convergence that was the socioeconomic goal of Roosevelt).

Apparently, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Kissinger were all a part of the same betrayal and conspiracy to disserve America and deliver the world to the masters in the Kremlin. Even George Bush the elder was part of it, though Reagan may have been a chronological island of patriotism in this chain of evil that somehow, despite its fiendish traitorousness, caused the Soviet Union to disintegrate, before the West self-degraded to the fatuous imbecilities of political correctness.

“That treacherous establishment is still there,” write Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov. I wish it were: I wish anyone now visible in a position of influence in Washington had a fraction of the competence or patriotic and democratic and capitalist conviction of those distinguished statesmen whom Mrs. West and Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov have so violently and unjustly assailed.

Could the real Starbucks please fill a cuppa? It's "obviously" unaffiliated, a Starbucks spokesman said, but a 'Dumb Starbucks' parody location that popped up on the weekend in L.A. was legit enough to confuse a few peopleCould the real Starbucks please fill a cuppa?
It's "obviously" unaffiliated, and they "are aware of it and looking into it,” a Starbucks spokesman said of a doppelganger coffee shop that popped up in the weekend in Los Angeles, looking in every way like a real Starbucks, except for, well, the word "dumb" being on the signage, and an explanatory Q&A on what the organizers were doing with their project.
Featured on the menu?
“Dumb Chai Tea Latte,” “Dumb Vanilla Blonde Roast,” “Dumb Caramel Macchiato,” naturally, and of course the coffees and teas were available in sizes “Dumb Venti,” “Dumb Grande,” and “Dumb Tall.”
Even the smaller Starbucks merchandising details were covered off by what organizers said was a use of parody and the fair use act: CDs by the checkouts included: “Dumb Jazz Standards,” “Dumb Norah Jones Duets” and “A Dumb Taste of Cuba.”
Everything was as it is at a real coffee shop, patrons <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/09/l-a-s-dumb-starbucks-imitates-the-real-thing/&quot; target="_blank">reported to the <em>Wall Street Journal</em></a>, except coffees were free, and um, the shop ran out of supplies at around 5 p.m. local time, with dozens of "customers" still waiting in line in the Los Feliz neighborhood.
A barista on site was at a loss to explain the shop, saying she'd been hired weeks earlier by a man she didn't recall the name of. Did she think she was part of the art? "I don’t know. What is art? Maybe serving coffee is art,” she said in response, which, we'll leave you to interpret as an answer.
As far as locals' responses went, as you might expect from cool, casual L.A., they went with the flow and got in line:
https://twitter.com/DeanSanchez/status/432924917961461760
Dumb Starbucks, of course, <a href="https://twitter.com/dumbstarbucks&quot; target="_blank">is also on Twitter</a>, already racking up nearly 6,000 followers.
For those more curious, there was the handy FAQ:
[caption id="attachment_132386" align="aligncenter" width="620"]<a href="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/dumb21.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-132386" alt="Twitter" src="http://wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/dumb21.jpg&quot; width="620" height="827" /></a> Twitter[/caption]
Meanwhile, while the REAL Starbucks was clearly a bit miffed at the L.A. stunt, they may have hot water of their own to crawl out of, as this morning <a href="http://video.foxnews.com/v/3179466098001/starbucks-turns-away-amputee-vet-service-dog&quot; target="_blank">a Fox News report highlighted a U.S. war veteran being turned away from a Starbucks location</a> in Texas because of his service dog, Beans. The veteran is an amputee, and was at the coffee shop to meet with a potential donor to the canine service charity that provided him with his dog, but was repeatedly questioned by a Starbucks employee, who said, according to the veteran, "You're not blind" and demanded to know why he needed a service dog at all, and how he was disabled. At first Iraq war vet Yancy Baer said he thought the staff member was joking, but then had to seek the assistance of another Starbucks barista to remain in the café, which didn't even comp him a drink after that, he said. A district manager apologized to the war vet later on, but Baer still said he won't be visiting Starbucks again.
And if that all sounds a little like a parody itself, well, sometimes life does imitate art, right?
[related_links /]

Most of the rest of the Bukovsky-Stroilov piece is an intra-academic-and-commentariat series of acerbic reflections. But it flares up again with a lot of bunk about how poor old Harry Hopkins was a Soviet agent and that American supplies to the U.S.S.R. that helped prevent the German occupation of St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1941 contributed to “such major catastrophes of the Second World War as the defeat [of the] Philippines and the fall of Singapore.” This is a complete fantasy: Admiral Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt had agreed when the U.S. took over the Philippines that it couldn’t defend the islands from the Japanese, and MacArthur did well to hang on for five months. Singapore was an all-British disaster, of little military consequence.

Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov charge that the “consensus about the Cold War,” i.e. that it was carried out seriously with the objective of containing and defeating Soviet Communism without a general war, was “false and corrupt”: “It is a product of the great cover-up. It was the same consensus who first denied the facts about the Soviet crimes and Western complicity … that there was no famine in the Soviet Union … that Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg were innocent.”

No, Mrs. West and gentlemen, it is not. On other days and other subjects, I am sure that Mrs. West and Mr. Bukovsky, and probably Mr. Stroilov, will write sensibly, but they haven’t done so here. The war of words probably is over, but not as Mrs. West would hope, and not for the reasons she implies.

Soon after the end of the Second World War, after the U.S.S.R. had absorbed more than 90% of the casualties the allies had suffered in subduing Nazi Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and most of Germany were all flourishing and democratic allies of the British and Americans. About 45 years later, the Soviet Union had disintegrated, China was a capitalist country, and Eastern Europe was largely free, without the horrors of a war between the Great Powers. This was a stunning sequence of achievements, of the statesmen who are, apart from President Reagan, smeared by Mrs. West, and Messrs. Bukovsky and Stroilov.

We all sympathize with and admire Mr. Bukovsky’s endurance of his ordeal. I do so as one who was also unjustly imprisoned, though for only three years and in the vastly gentler regime of the United States. (It was no day at the beach. And it has not destroyed my regard for the U.S., but it has not made me a compulsive American-flag-waver, either.) Whatever injustices any of us may have suffered, they do not entitle us to defame the justly honoured dead, invent and deform history, or impugn the righteousness of our civilization — flawed and tainted and often riddled with hypocrisy though it is, but the best the world has had.

National Review

A longer version of this column originally appeared in the National Review and the New York Sun.

MOSCOW — Millions of people died in Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s gulag, but the 75th anniversary of the founding of one of the notorious forced-labour camps was cause for a celebration in Russia.

Russian news portals reported Tuesday that local officials and prison wardens threw a party last week honoring the Usolsky camp in the Urals, with music and dancing and speeches by former camp guards.

The NKVD, the KGB predecessor which ran the gulag, “instilled traditions in the camp that still hold value today,” the Solikamsky regional department of Russia’s prison service said in a statement. These traditions included allegiance to the motherland, mutual assistance and respect for war veterans, the statement said.

Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers who had been captured by Nazi forces during World War II were sent to the gulag after the war.

“So hard were the times in which the Usolsky camp was founded, so heavy were the burdens it overcame!” Sergei Yerofeyev, deputy chairman of a committee for retired prison wardens, said in the statement. The camp was founded in 1938, a year when the NKVD executed hundreds of thousands of people for “political crimes” and sent millions more to the gulag.

So hard were the times in which the Usolsky camp was founded, so heavy were the burdens it overcame!

“What bravery its directors displayed over that time, so that the institution could stand tall and successfully complete its production and social tasks,” Yerofeyev added.

Usolsky camp held from 10,000 to 30,000 prisoners at any given time, including those convicted of “counter-revolutionary activity” and other political crimes. More than 16 percent of prisoners there died of malnutrition and overwork, one of the highest rates in the gulag.

Many political prisoners were freed after Stalin died in 1953. The Usolsky camp transferred its remaining political prisoners in 1955 and was closed in 1960.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/russian-prison-wardens-throw-party-for-75th-anniversary-of-stalins-notorious-forced-labour-camp/feed0stdRUSSIA-STALIN-ANNIVERSARY.jpgRussian city gets to play 'Stalin wasn't so bad' six days a yearhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/russian-city-gets-to-play-stalin-wasnt-so-bad-six-days-a-year
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/russian-city-gets-to-play-stalin-wasnt-so-bad-six-days-a-year#commentsFri, 01 Feb 2013 16:35:01 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=105289

The Russian city of Volgograd has decided that, for six days a year, it will revert to being named Stalingrad.

The idea, allegedly, is to please World War II veterans who associate the old name with the glorious victories over Nazi invaders. On days commemorating the anniversaries of specific events — including the defeat of the Nazi attack on the city, Victory in Europe day and the Japanese surrender — it will be known as “Hero City Stalingrad”.

The name, of course, is associated with the communist leader Josef Stalin. The current Russian leader Vladimir Putin, is big on reviving memories of Russia’s glorious past, including the years when Stalin ruled unchallenged. In that spirit, and with the Volgograd decision in mind, there are rumours that, for six days a year, Putin will be allowed to hold show trials, stage mass arrests, establish a network of gulags and create agricultural “collectives” at the loss of millions of lives.

It’s probably just a rumour, though.

National Post

PS: Volgograd has a population of more than 1 million. How many World War II veterans could there be? They must be a noisy group.

MOSCOW — Russia’s parliament expelled an outspoken opponent of President Vladimir Putin on Friday in a vote which the deputy likened to a Stalinist show trial and said intensified a Kremlin crackdown on dissent.

Opposition activists said the ousting of Gennady Gudkov, the first lawmaker to be voted out of the State Duma by peers since 1995, would radicalize demonstrators on the eve of an anti-Putin rally in Moscow.

The opposition lawmaker was expelled over allegations he ran a business while in the lower house, which is illegal. Gudkov denied the charge, but the expulsion deprived him of parliamentary immunity and he could face trial and up to two years in jail.

“Everything happening here is a lawless show trial. It is a political vendetta and extrajudicial punishment,” Gudkov told the Duma before the vote, as he compared Russia’s top prosecutor to one of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s henchmen.

[np-related

The chamber voted 291-150 to oust the 56-year-old former KGB officer with three abstentions.

“I received my mandate from the people, from hundreds of thousands of voters who voted for me, and only they can judge what kind of deputy I am,” he said.

He also drew comparisons between his accusers in the Duma and the “oprichniki” who carried out repressions under Tsar Ivan The Terrible in 16th-century Russia.

Gudkov raised his fist in defiance as he walked out of the chamber after the vote. Wearing a trademark crumpled brown suit, the portly and mustachioed deputy shook hands with allies in the chamber and kissed one woman deputy as he made his way out.

He is a member of the Just Russia party, and was formerly an ally of Putin’s United Russia but became an opposition force in the run-up to December’s parliamentary election.

WARNING OF CIVIL WAR

Gudkov said the allegations against him, over his connections with a construction materials market and security firms, were “a farce” and has circulated a list of pro-Putin members of the chamber he says are guilty of running businesses.

“If they dare to open a criminal case against me and jail me, well, I will accept such fate. But I want to say once again the country has taken a step towards a civil war,” he said.

But deputy general prosecutor Vladimir Malinovsky told the chamber Gudkov had carried out “entrepreneurial activities” before entering the Duma and had not stopped them when he took up his seat.

A deputy chief of the federal investigative committee, Yelena Leonenko, said it would continue its investigation into Gudkov’s business activities until September 23, and would then decide whether to open criminal proceedings against him.

The vote on whether Gudkov should be expelled was held at the request of the head of a parliamentary committee on lawmakers’ declared incomes.

The Kremlin has denied attacking critics through their business activities, and says it has not launched a crackdown on the opposition since Putin returned to the presidency in May.

But opposition leaders portray Gudkov’s treatment as part of a growing campaign to discredit their movement.

Protest leader Alexei Navalny has been accused of stealing timber from a state firm, which could land him in prison for 10 years, and he and other opposition leaders had their homes raided a day before the last big opposition rally on June 12.

“ARBITRARY USE OF LAWS”

Putin, a former KGB spy, has signed laws aimed at restricting street protests, punishing slander and branding foreign-funded organizations as foreign agents.

In a statement issued before the vote, the European Parliament criticized the treatment of Gudkov and urged Russia “to refrain from using laws arbitrarily for the purpose of clamping down on members of the opposition”.

Saturday’s march, which the opposition expects to attract at least 50,000 people, is a new test of the strength for the protest movement in the capital. The rallies which began nine months ago have lost momentum since Putin returned to the Kremlin but his approval ratings have fallen.

Twitter, one of the main platforms for the protest movement was buzzing with angry supporters promising to demonstrate at the rally, called the “March of Millions”.

“I’m watching G. Gudkov’s show trial in the Duma, and I ask myself the question: How can I not come to the March of Millions? Of course, I will be there!” said a man who called himself Yevgeny Shchirov.‏

Last month three women from punk band Pussy Riot were jailed for two years for singing an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in Moscow’s main Russian Orthodox church.

Gudkov’s supporters say the authorities are violating the law in their haste to make him the first deputy voted out of the Duma by his peers since the founder of MMM, a pyramid scheme that cost many Russians their life savings, was ejected in 1995.

They say the state can ask the Duma to strip a deputy of his parliamentary immunity from prosecution but has no authority to ask lawmakers to vote him out.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/russia-expels-outspoken-opponent-of-president-putin-from-parliament/feed3stdRussian opposition lawmaker Gennady Gudkov, right, gestures as he walks surrounded by his supporters and journalists in front of the State Duma, the lower parliament chamber, in Moscow, Russia, on Friday, Sept. 14, 2012. The former KGB colonel turned opposition lawmaker who has angered the Kremlin with his scathing criticism and involvement in street protests against President Vladimir Putin was stripped of his parliament seat on Friday.